The Sailor's Ransom

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London, 1875. At Lady Cornford's famous soiree (sugared almonds and tittle-tattle) everyone is gossiping about Henry Ellis Margam's latest hit, The Widow’s Secret?but only a few people know that one of Lady C's guests, the enigmatic Bella Wallis, is in fact the bestselling novelist. Bella punishes evil-doers by exposing them as thinly-disguised characters in the books she writes under her male pseudonym.?One of her confidantes is?the dashing Philip Westland,?who comes to her now with a problem: his best friend Kennett is smitten by Miss Mary Skillane,?an heiress whose?father has?promised her to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, currently residing in a Cornish bank vault, but it seems the pearls were ill-gotten. Can Bella and her friends unite the young lovers and escape the attention of the villainous Judd?

Brian Thompson has written two award-winning volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum, winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEckerley Prize, and Clever Girl, longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The first Bella Wallis mystery was The Widow's Secret.